Do any small business owners here know any tips or tricks to get your business to come up on a Google search?
I have a Google places listing, but I don't show up anywhere when searching for a plumber in Chesterfield, Michigan. If you Google Shackleton Plumbing, I show up. I don't know how to fix this. A friend is a SEO guy, and wants to charge me $200/month to get me seen on Google. I think with a little knowledge I can do it myself.
Thanks for any help.

Google Local. It's easy to set-up and puts you right there on page one. I started a pressure washing - soft washing business this year and the very first thing I did was set up my website and then Google Local. Checking my site logs, all of my calls come from one or the other.

You don't want to play with adwords offering plumbing services. That shit can spiral out of control real quick. $$$.

I do adwords on my other website and pull a ton of conversions from it, but it can get expensive and doesn't really allow room for mistakes.

Getting a real website is doable. I didn't think it would really matter.

it definitely matters if google SEO is your concern. You're not going to show up in google searches with a facebook page only.

get a simple, one page site that gives local people the info they need to know about you how to and contact you. Come up with a list of 100-or-so keywords that will lead people to your site. Pay your buddy to help with SEO for a few months and see if it helps business.

Thanks for the info. Getting a real website is doable. I didn't think it would really matter.

For what it's worth, and from what I know....

Register your domain and build a simple site. Wordpress offers a bunch of simple setups that would do the trick.

SEO is built on saying the same thing a number of ways, and changing content frequently. Ongoing blogs and customer reviews are probably the best way for a small business like you to keep content up to date and show up in the search engines. Create writeups of happy clients, ask them to review your work, etc. Update it regularly with current info with a bunch of relevant keywords.